Mick's GeekBlog

Much monkey on my mind

Have I been neglecting my blog this week? You could say that. You could get a punch in the face for saying that, but that’s the chance you take when you mouth off to me…

Yes, I have neglected my blog this week. I warned you this would happen. Blogging every single day was good for me, for a period of time. That time has passed. And the official marking of that time was this Monday, when the CyberMonkeyDeathSquad went back online, so to speak.

I’m going to be honest, when I started the site I didn’t really know what I was doing. I wasn’t sure what the site should be, I didn’t know exactly where we were going, which made it difficult to know what we needed to do to get there. I feel like I know what I want to do now, I’ve got a few folks that share the dream, and a few more that are going to give it a shot. We’ve got a new back-end that makes the site more fluid. And we have a new front end that I think is as good looking as anything else out there.

My only regret is that, while we were on our rebuild campaign, I allowed the site to get a little stagnant. There hasn’t been much content going up for the last few months, except for Abraxas. He’s a rock.

I, however, was burned. I had lost my drive, I had lost my inspiration. I blame part of it on the old backend, I blame most of it on myself.

And that’s where the blog came in. I used the blog to get my mojo back. I used the blog to get my discipline back. And it worked. I’m back, baby, and I’m feeling better than ever. I’m inspired, I’m energized, I’m excited, and it’s contagious. Everyone is writing again, and new stuff is going up almost every day.

Can you blame me if some days I write content for the website instead of the blog?

That leaves one question unanswered. What about the screenplay (or screenplays) I was writing?

I’m going to finish that, I am. It got sidetracked, and I don’t feel bad about that. Ok, I feel a little bad about that, but I’m comfortable with it. I got stuck. I think it’s probably more hip to say I got blocked… I’m just not that hip. I got stuck. I got to the end and couldn’t figure out how to end it.

At the same time, I was quietly cut loose by the people I was working with on it. I’m still not sure what happened, communications simply ceased. It bothered me, but at the time I wrote it off to people being busy with other things. I didn’t want to add any pressure, so I decided to be patient and easygoing. A few weeks later, I’m told that it was deliberate. I’m not going to play he said she said with you, there’s no need to go there. Except…

It hurt my feelings. I’m man enough to admit that. It hurt my feelings. I was essentially cast aside based on a rumor. No one asked ME if I said what I was accused of saying. I wasn’t given the benefit of the doubt. No one even bothered to tell me to kiss their ass. I was simply… ignored.

At this point, I had a few options. I could have contacted the person who was ignoring me and asked “what the hell?”. I could have contacted the person who was ignoring me and told them to get bent. Instead, I did what I usually do when someone hurts my feelings. I wrote them off. I put everything I thought or felt about that person in a little box and set it on my mental shelf.

That may not be the most adult way to handle a situation, but it’s what I do. And once it’s done, I have a hard time undoing it. I’m loyal to my friends, loyal to a fault, and when my friends then turn around and hurt me, I withdraw rather than expose myself to more pain. It’s not anger. It looks like anger, but it’s not anger. It’s my own twisted little defense mechanism. It doesn’t really work. It works in the sense that they don’t hurt me further, and it works in the sense that I don’t explode at them and make the situation worse. But nothing gets better. The problems don’t get solved.

And somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of my psyche, I shut down any work on the fiction front. None of this is conscious, I’m not 100% sure why i do it, these are just guesses, but here’s what I think happened. I was already feeling stuck, which doesn’t help my feelings of not knowing what I’m doing. I’ve written one screenplay. I’m learning this as I go. Being cut off by the people who were helping me made me feel like I didn’t matter. And we all know I have issues with that anyway. This person, these people, are the people who got me involved in writing fiction. Did they blow me off because I suck at it? It doesn’t matter, because now I feel like I suck at it. And every time I think about working on it again, that wound is re-opened. So I just don’t do it. It’s easier to push it to the side than it is to deal with it. I don’t want to deal with it now.

Dealing with a problem by ignoring the problem. You might expect a better, more effective, response from a trained psychologist. You’d be wrong. We know how to help other people. We’re all pretty much fucked up ourselves.

Will I get back to it? Will I write fiction again? Maybe. I’m not making any promises right now. I’m not setting any deadlines for myself. This is not the time. This is the time to get the website to some level of respectability. Fiction distracted me. I liked it, it was fun, but I started writing non-fiction. I like writing non-fiction. I like putting my thoughts out there for the world to read. I don’t need to write fiction. I don’t need to make up stories. I don’t need to write a movie.

I almost believe that. Check back with me in a month or two to see how I feel then. For now, I’m back at the helm of my distinctly non-fiction website. That feels good. That feels damn good. Come and play with us, won’t you?